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When Historia closes her eyes, she is standing on the shoulder of a Titan.
She will love her, she knows, for the rest of her life. She has not felt the spiky press of wild grass beneath her bare soles for years now, has not breathed air beyond these castle walls since long before the war ended, but she still remembers the rush of wind in her hair, the stretch of her thighs over a horse. The terror of hearing those slow, thundering footsteps, watching shrieking birds flee to the skies as she gripped her swords, blood thundering in her ears, and remembered what it felt like to want to live.
She remembers it. She remembers it all. She dreams of it the way one might dream of a lover, of a father — the people that she might have had, might have dreamt about, had she been able to hold onto them for a moment longer. She has dreamt of herself dying in the stomach of a Titan, torn to pieces, eaten alive, and when she wakes, her belly is round and her room is large and she is small and she wonders what Paradis would think to find their queen bleeding in her bedroom, her hands clutching a knife that she planted into her own uterus.
Historia does not want to die.
She has no opinion on her husband. She has no opinion on the women that he fucks when he thinks that no one is around, has no opinion on his attempts to make it up to her, afterwards, as if she cares at all. She has no opinion on the traitors in her courtroom pleading for their lives, the letters from leaders across an ocean she wishes to forget, the guards that follow her so closely that she can feel their breaths on her neck when she stops too abruptly. She does what is needed and does not think about what it means. She opens her eyes, every morning, and does not close them again until it is dark. This is what needs to be done. This is what she does.
And yet, when she closes her eyes, it is to the sight of Ymir’s staring into hers, aglow with orange from the setting sun. Come with me, she says. And Historia does.
//
They used to sit for hours together in the dark. They never really touched, at least not in the way that Historia likes to touch other people, and she remembers every single time that they did. The accidental brush of Ymir’s fingers against her knuckles as she passed her a fork across the table. The press of Ymir’s arm against the top of Historia’s head, when Ymir was being so stupid that a headbutt was the only way she could get through to her. Once, Ymir snatched a half-empty bottle of wine off of the officers’ table when no one was watching, and they slipped out into the courtyard and finished it off together, giggling so hard that they kept falling into each other, under the thin light of a fading moon.
Ymir was angry, often, and Historia would be lying if she said that she wasn’t scared at first. She was always frightened of conflict, especially when it came from people she cared about, and back then, she was starting to care about Ymir more than she had ever cared about anyone else.
The thing was that Ymir had a tendency to get loud, would lash out when she felt threatened, which was more often than not. Historia figured that out after the second time Ymir yelled at her. It was never personal, and she always came back to Historia with a set jaw, blinking too many times, with a quiet hesitancy that Historia has only ever heard a few times. There was never anything to forgive. More often than not, it was Historia’s fault for pushing her to that state. I’m losing you, she would think, every time, and would fall over herself with relief when Ymir eventually returned, came back to her with hard eyes and set shoulders. Like she was preparing to fight a battle she knew she was going to lose.
There was never anything to win. There was never anything to lose. Not with Ymir. Historia would have given her anything, everything, and asked for nothing at all.
Love had occurred to her. Not in the way that her friends would whisper about, sometimes, between training sessions or in the darkness of their barracks when the candles were blown out and it was so quiet, all around, that she could hear the faintest of drowsy sighs from across the room. But it was obvious; of course she loved Ymir. She loved her the way that women love their husbands, men love their wives. She loved her in the way that a father loves his child, how a bird loves the warmth of the sun over its wings.
But she had never wanted for more. Not from Ymir. She never wanted anything from Ymir, nothing but what she wanted to give, was willing to give. And was that love? Historia would have been content with anything, with everything, with what they had and less than that and more than that. She wanted to do everything for her, love her in every way that she deserved, but only if Ymir wanted it from her. Only if she wanted it. Only if she thought about it.
She wanted nothing more than what they already had. She wanted to take nothing from Ymir but what she was willing to give, wanted to give her nothing but what she wanted.
But neither of them had wanted to go.
//
And was it love, was it ever love, if Historia lays on her back and stares at the ceiling and lets a man inside of her, lets him touch places that Ymir had never even thought about?
Was it love if she cannot even say her name when there is a person in the room?
Ymir, she says to herself in the dark, when no one is around, Ymir, Ymir, Ymir, like it will summon her to her side, like it will erase everything that happened and take them back to those warmer, terrifying days of the unknown, when everything was big and bright and so awful that she cried herself to sleep more often than she didn’t. But terror with someone beside you is better than confronting that black, yawning maw of certainty. Ymir, she says, and she attempting to claw her way back to that forest, back to that open field, back to that sunset, back to clinging to thick strands of dark hair, scrabbling at rough, wind-hewn skin, as she let her head fall back, let the sounds of her friends shouting fade far away, and stared up at an open, darkening sky, to ask if this could last forever.
And then the door opens. And then the lips on hers are unwelcome, are the only ones she has felt before. And she does not know what Ymir’s would feel like, does not know what any touch from her feels like but those accidental brushes, those false-casual drapes of an arm over her shoulders, and she does not know if she ever wanted to know anything more than that. Whatever you want. Whatever you want. And there are children running around her ankles, growing taller with every passing day, clinging to her skirts and loving her and she loves them, she loves them, and she made them, and she was meant to make them, but they were never something that she wanted. I am not betraying you, she tells herself, this is not a betrayal, because there was never anything to betray.
There was never anything to betray except everything that there was.
And so she goes on. And so she loves and does not say a word. And so she breathes and dreams that her breaths fill Ymir’s lungs, dreams that if she lives long enough and hard enough, it will be enough to see her again. To sit under the sun with her again. To lay down on the floor beside her, two precious inches between them, giggling too hard to fall asleep. To flee from the world with her again, racing away from the setting sun. To love her. To love her freely. To be free. To love her. To love her. To love her. I love you, she shouts into the wind, fingers wrapped through hair she has never touched before, will never touch again. I love you, I love you, I love you.